Review

Best Performances of 2012

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“You aren’t about to leave Serse off your Best Performances list, are you?”

I felt like I had a disproportionate number of “almosts” this year–plenty of wonderful singing, playing, conducting, directing, etc., but almost every performance came with a serious caveat that some other element was seriously lacking (e.g., I loved Christopher Alden’s production of Così at the City Opera, and the cast was overall quite excellent, but the orchestra was oy). So it usually goes in opera. While my “best performances” list is short, tons of great stuff didn’t fit in here here–Nina Stemme’s Brünnhilde! Christian Gerhaher! The Makropulos Case! But if you want to see what I have to think about any of them, well, read the archives of this blog, because if I relived everything this would be really long. On that note, I had best proceed.

Best Performances of 2012

Serse (Komische Oper): Who knew that Regietheater wizard Stefan Herheim would turn into Mel Brooks when attempting Baroque opera? This production had a joyous and knowing attitude towards opera, and super performances from the Komische Oper ensemble. Some of it was a little recycled, but that was kind of the point, and I’ve actually found myself describing it to explain how Baroque opera works, it’s that spot-on. This production needs to be on DVD, so I can watch it whenever I’m feeling sad about life. 

Der Ring des Nibelungen (Bayerische Staatsoper): A modest Ring for unsure times, it suggested that in the end all we need is love. Fair enough, for the Ring. While sometimes too minimal for me to have strong opinions about (until a somewhat discordant, blaringly ideological Götterdämmerung), it did have a quiet poetry, and some achingly earnest performances from Anja Kampe, Nina Stemme, and Wolfgang Koch, and the entire cast did the text and drama proud. Even without directly comparing it to the Met’s DOA Lepage Ring, it had palpable life.

Lulu (Semper Oper Dresden): A scintillating performance by Gisela Stille in the title role, Cornelius Meister’s eloquent conducting, a marvelously committed cast in… another Herheim production, this one with some seriously scary clowns. I know I’m boring by just praising him all the time, but his work has a way of growing and gaining coherence in your memory as time passes, as you make sense of it for yourself.
Excellent Musical Performances: Wozzeck in concert at Avery Fisher Hall (not reviewed, sorry), La clemenza di Tito (Met), Khovanshchina (Met)
Excellent Productions (new or relatively new): Così fan tutte (Christopher Alden, City Opera), Mitridate, re di Ponto (David Bösch, Bayerische Staatsoper), Wozzeck (Andreas Kriegenburg, Bayerische Staatsoper)
Best Individual Performances
ANJAAA! (with KLAUS FLORIAAAN!)

Anja Kampe (Sieglinde, Die Walküre, Bayerische Staatsoper) Such raw, vivid expression! My offer of a year or two ago to found an Anja Kampe Fan Club still stands. 

Anna Netrebko (Mimì, La bohème, Salzburg) The perfect role for her lush voice and earnestly vivacious presence.
Elina Garanca (Sesto, La clemenza di Tito, Met). I never thought I would say that! Very elegant.
Simon Keenlyside (Wozzeck, Wozzeck, Munich and Bayerische Staatsoper) Terrifying.
 
Classing Up the Joint, AKA Fabulous Performances Under Questionable Circumstances:
Bryn Terfel (Wotan, Ring, Met) There was more to one of his monologues than to whole acts of Lepage.
Waltraud Meier (Waltraute, Götterdämmerung, Met) There was also more to hers. A cameo that nearly redeemed the whole evening.
Anna Caterina Antonacci (Cassandre, Les Troyens, ROH) Maybe the Trojans didn’t believe her Cassandra, but the audience definitely did.
Jonas Kaufmann (Bacchus, Ariadne auf Naxos, Salzburg) Great singing with shamelessly bonkers acting.
Best Conductors
Esa-Pekka Salonen (Wozzeck, not reviewed)

Names to Watch

Guanqun Yu (Leonora, Trovatore, Met)
Jennifer Rowley (Orasia, Orpheus, City Opera)
Jamie Barton (Agnese, Beatrice di Tenda, Collegiate Chorale)
Hannah Hipp (Anna, Les Troyens, ROH)
Paul Appleby (Hylas, Les Troyens, Met)
Ryan Speedo Green (The Mandarin, Turandot, Met)
Least Awful New Met Production
Un ballo in maschera. It seemed like a decent production with a few issues, unlike most of the rest, which were issues without the potential for goodness. (Runner-up: Manon.)
Most Interesting Performance That Wasn’t Actually Good 
Fidelio (Dresden). The singing ranged from bad to really bad (Evelyn Herlitzius can be epic, but on this night she wasn’t), but this production has been hanging around since 1989. That’s a momentous date, particularly when you’re talking about Fidelio.
Best Trend
Video streaming on the internet from European opera houses. Unlike the Met HD broadcasts, these free, not that high quality productions (meaning the quality of the recording, not of the performance–the picture isn’t high def, the stage lights aren’t brightened for the occasion, and the sound can be a little tinny) aren’t aiming to replace the live opera experience (which is my biggest problem with the Met program, it teaches us to be numb to the virtues of liveness), and they make great, unique stuff accessible worldwide to people who would otherwise not see them. The leaders in this category are Brussels’s La Monnaie and Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper. The TV channels Arte and Medici also produce webcasts, which tend to be very high quality but often have regional restrictions (though sometimes you can find these, ahem, elsewhere–big thanks to those kind souls who disseminate things like the Bayreuth Parsifal and La Scala Lohengrin, both of which I loved).

Worst Trend
Assuming that you audience is uninterested in complexity and depth, both intellectual and emotional. The Met’s worst efforts this year–the Ring and Enchanted Island–presumed the attention span and maturity of a 13-year old (or less). Dumbing things down left us with shows that were insipid, shallow, and actually pretty boring. While not everyone has a great knowledge of opera, operagoers are generally educated and curious people accustomed to films and books that are drastically more sophisticated that the kinds of things going on at many American opera houses. They can be spoken to like adults. (Some of them may find this surprising, OK, but they can learn.)

Let’s hope for a great 2013!

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Review

Maria Stuarda loses her head on the eve of 2013

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“I had a dream my gala would be/So different from this pilgrim dress I’m wearing…”

One of the less-noted trends of the Peter Gelb era has been the renaissance of bel canto (and bel canto-adjacent) opera at the Met. So far we have had new productions of Anna Bolena, L’elisir d’amore, La fille du régiment, Lucia di Lammermoor, La sonnambula, Armida, Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Le Comte Ory (as well as Don Pasquale just before Gelb’s regime began). To this list you can now add Maria Stuarda, the middle installment of a Donizetti “Queens” trilogy directed by David McVicar. (This began with Bolena last season, the final entry will be Roberto Devereux, reportedly featuring Sondra Radvonovsky next season.)

I think bel canto has proven compatible with two of Gelb’s artistic priorities: star casting and slick but literal-minded storytelling (the latter often in the guise of “accessibility”). Most of these productions have been sold on the fame of their casts. Many of the operas themselves have colorful settings and no obvious complicating social or metaphysical angles (Mary Zimmerman’s high-concept Sonnambula was an exception in this regard). They are primarily showpieces. But for this rep to be anything more than routine and mundane you need real star quality singing and charisma. Unfortunately only a few of these productions have found the people capable of that.

Maria Stuarda is OK, but there’s still a certain fire missing.

Donizetti, Maria Stuarda. Metropolitan Opera, 12/31/2012. New production premiere directed by David McVicar with sets and costumes by John Macfarlane, lights by Jennifer Tipton, and choreography by Leah Hausman, conducted by Maurizio Benini with Joyce DiDonato (Maria Stuarda), Elza van den Heever (Elisabetta), Matthew Rose (Talbot), Joshua Hopkins (Cecil), Maria Zifchak (Anna).

I guess you have to give David McVicar some credit. Unlike quite a few Met directors, he definitely knows what he is doing and rarely produces the giant “WTF?” moments many other recent stagings have induced. But he hasn’t been very inspired recently, either, and this production is no exception.

McVicar’s Maria Stuarda production is more colorful and flashy than last year’s Anna Bolena, but otherwise similar. The costumes are exaggerated period with some tweaks of design and color, the sets minimal and austere. (Both are designed by John Macfarlane.) We open with a big old party, a convenient place for McVicar to stick his compulsory acrobats. But almost everyone is wearing pure white, which cuts down on the bacchanalia factor.

The rest of the evening is less busy, with about one striking thing per scene while the rest is by the book. Queen E wears a wide red skirt that opens like curtains to reveal pants (performing masculinity oh so subtly) while her rival Maria Stuarda (Mary Queen of Scots) and her cohort dress in plain black. There are a few strong images: the tiny windows of Mary’s prison, the backdrop filling with the orders she wrote when she was queen, and her sad end, in which she reveals a red dress for her final ascent to a giant executioner. (This executioner is, by the way, fully clothed–where is the McVicar of yore?)

McVicar and the cast create a stark contrast between serious, gracious, and feminine Maria and cranky, assertive Elizabeth, the latter adopting a lurching gait and little royal dignity. (I don’t remember the opera’s Schiller source, which I saw in an excellent Donmar Warehouse production a few years ago, as nearly this unsubtle.) Maria is meant to excite the most sympathy, but is shorted on exposition and backstory, and in this production rarely appears more than mildly perturbed. Elisabetta is a far more interesting character, and here developed much more vividly. She has a country to run and alliances to make. Who really cares for this plain imprisoned lady who only occasionally works up a decent curse?

The production is, as a backdrop, perfectly OK. It would be fine as a frame for brilliant and passionate performances. Unfortunately we didn’t really get those and it remains kind of weak sauce. Both ladies are miscast and neither projected on the grand scale required.

This was conceived as a vehicle for Joyce DiDonato. While the role of Maria Stuarda is usually sung by a soprano, some transposition makes it workable for her mezzo. There’s a long history of this kind of transposition, I don’t object (though in the final scene having a true soprano floating above is more effective), but DiDonato just doesn’t seem right even when it has been lowered. While she sings the notes with exemplary musicality, expression, and taste, her sound is more thin than plush, which in this kind of thing is a problem. Under pressure her tone acquires a pronounced bleaty vibrato, at soft dynamics the vibrato disappears entirely. And her intonation is (or was in this performance, at least) highly problematic, tending flat towards the ends of phrases and in cadenzas wavering all over the place. Sometimes she caught it and corrected but I found it a constant distraction preventing me from ever becoming immersed in her performance.

I wasn’t terribly convinced by her acting, either, which seemed too mild to play up to me in the Family Circle. A few big moments–that curse–were staged as Dramatic Actions, but then her voice didn’t really back her up. Maybe it was more convincing closer up, but she never convinced me of her star-ness. I’m sorry to pile on but these are pretty serious issues for a major singer in a new production.

Elza van den Heever gives a striking performance as Elisabetta, with a variety of impressive costumes, but her hip-swaying is more Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth than it is Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth. I did appreciate her spirit, though, and she takes far greater dramatic risks than DiDonato appears to. Her voice lacks the sheer tonal beauty and evenness between registers to be ideal for this repertoire, and has a very prominent vibrato. But it’s certainly an interesting and compelling instrument, very powerful at the top and well-controlled (impressive coloratura for such a large voice), and it will be interesting to see how she develops (possibly in a Wagner-Strauss sort of direction?).

Matthew Polenzani is better as Leicester than he was as Nemorino in the fall. He is vocally impeccable, with a far wider tonal palette than either of the ladies, and the voice is just the right size. The older, more established Leicester is a better fit for his personality and age than goofy young Nemorino was. But the role is basically standard tenor posturing, and he never really got a big star moment. The supporting cast was competent but bland, with none sticking very strongly in my memory. The chorus, though, was fabulous, and made the music sound far better than it deserves to (bel canto choruses are, I must admit, a pet peeve of mine–so boring!), and Maurizio Benini’s conducting seemed perfectly fine to me, certainly better than his work in Elisir.

But there’s nothing here that holds a candle to Anna Netrebko in Anna Bolena. I’m sure it will satisfy Joyce DiDonato fans, because there is indeed a lot of Joyce DiDonato, but to me it was rarely more than middling. Since bel canto is not really my preferred variety of opera, my standards for enjoyment may be unduly high, but this one didn’t draw me in.

Maria Stuarda runs through January, with the inevitable HD broadcast on January 19.

Video Clip:

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Review

Troy again

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 Les Troyens is a wonderful, unique, and rare opera (also REALLY BIG), but it’s not one that sells itself. Without an equally strong and unique cast and production–from each of the principals to the chorus and choreography–its five and a half hours can become a bit of a slog. While there are some considerable virtues in the Met’s current revival, it’s only an intermittently satisfying affair.


Berlioz, Les Troyens. Metropolitan Opera, 12/17/2013. Production by Francesca Zambello (revival), conducted by Fabio Luisi with Susan Graham (Didon), Deborah Voigt (Cassandre), Marcello Giordani (Énée), way too many more, see here

Francesca Zambello’s production is fairly traditional, with a few Virgilian Easter eggs and non sequitur insertions that pass for vision. Maria Bjørnson’s multi-level George Tsypin-esque set is neither particularly effective nor intrusive, though its textured strips of metal make it resemble a high-end corporate lobby. (The sight lines are bad, too. In Act 2 I couldn’t see the ghost of Hector at all.) The costumes are traditional colorful robes and armor in the Troy portion and in the Carthage half consist of lots of all-white robes and royal purple. Zambello tends towards the heavy-handed and cluttered. Some plot points are underlined and circled, such as Ascagne taking Dido’s ring and Andromache’s screaming, while other developments seem quite badly timed, such as Dido and Aeneas finding love at the beginning of the Hunt kind of robs the rest of the act of its point.

After having seen three different productions of this opera live (this one, David McVicar’s in London,* and David Pountney’s in Berlin), I have come to three conclusions (besides that Troy is far, far easier to effectively stage than Carthage):

    1.    The Carthaginians don’t have chairs. They lounge on cushions.
    2.    The Carthaginians always look like the members of a New Age cult. White robes, little in the way of gender differentiation (apparently a side effect of having a queen?).
    3.    The dancing is usually awful, and goes on for far too long.

I actually liked Doug Varone’s choreography of the Chasse royal a lot, where he has a chance to build the drama to some developmental music, and wished Dido and Aeneas hadn’t been providing visual distraction as well as premature macking. But the insertion of dance at other points, such as Iopas’s song and the jazz hand-filled Laocöon ensemble, is irritating, and the long dance sections of Acts 3 and 4 outstay their welcome. Overall, at least as revived here it’s a generic, uninspired production–in Carthage considerably less egregious than David McVicar’s recent effort but also far less visually arresting in Troy. I must say that this production’s moderately-sized, literal horse is far less impressive than both McVicar’s steampunk fire-snorter and the Pountney production’s take, where giant feet kicked at the Trojans from overhead.

The problem with a lackluster Troyens is that you become acutely aware of how uneven the piece is. It’s not that much of it’s bad (I think it’s 98% genius, and the 2% is mostly the Dance of the Nubian Slave Girls), but it doesn’t fit together without consistent energy and vision. In this performance, I was not convinced that we really needed two peripheral beatific tenor arias, plus, well, I adore the whiny soldiers in Act 5. They’re my second favorite whiny soldier duo in opera, beat only by Nero’s guard in Poppea. The glance into their lives, plus the respite of Hylas’s music, are what gives the opera its epic quality. But if they don’t have some spirit you just want to get on with it.

next up: Dance of the Campaign Pollsters

The best thing about Fabio Luisi’s conducting is that it kept everything moving. I liked his work in the quieter music best, such as the lovely Didon-Anna duets, where he found a nice gentle flow. And the processions and choruses had a good solid momentum, with only a few coordination issues early on. The chorus, by the way, might be the real star of Les Troyens, and while I found the Met chorus somewhat less impressive than the ROH’s last summer, it was still a strong showing. Where I thought Luisi was less satisfying was in the quirky stuff that makes Berlioz so special, stuff like the ostinatos, the irregular phrases, the sudden turns. Stuff like this moment. Luisi has a tendency to make it all sound like early Beethoven, and pleasantly bland early Beethoven at that. More lurching energy, more neuroticism was needed.

Besides the chorus, Susan Graham is the star of this production. Her Didon is absolutely beautifully sung and acted, with more depth and intensity than I remember in her performance on the Châtelet DVD. She expertly balances musical grace with the text, giving her Didon dignity and stature, convincingly regal but also human. Her voice is bright but also slightly grainy, a perfect size for this role and by the end she becomes a real tragedienne at the end. Her only issue is high notes: the big and prominent B flat in “Chers Tyriens” simply entirely failed to come out both times, leading to a somewhat anticlimactic end. I’m guessing there isn’t a lot of time with Octavian in her future (which is a shame, because she is otherwise outstanding there!).

I wonder if Marcello Giordani took the widespread rumors of his imminent replacement personally. (How could you not?) For the first three acts he seemed to be giving it his all, and managed a little better than I expected. His voice is aging, the high notes extraordinarily loud but not very pretty, the disconnected lower range hollow-sounding and weak. It was in Act 4 where the problems really began to show, with a can belto “Nuit d’ivresse” that completely drowned out Graham’s more appropriately nuanced efforts, and his Act 5 “Inutiles regrets” were indeed regrettable, involving something resembling a high C and some B flats but also a lot of vaguely rhythmic, somewhat pitched shouting towards the end. His acting is acceptable but not exactly dashing or charismatic. I would not at all be surprised if he were sent packing to, uh, Italie before the HD broadcast (“he’s not Italian! he’s Sicilian!” -my relatives, my family comes from southern Italy). The rumored replacement is Bryan Hymel, who, with indisputable competence if not terribly much beauty, sang the role earlier in London this year.

Deborah Voigt’s wan, poorly sung Cassandre made me long for London’s brilliant Anna Caterina Antonacci. Voigt was always a Chrysothemis, someone who plants themselves in front of the conductor and makes a glorious sound. Cassandre is a role that requires the charisma and madness of a mystic, which Voigt has never possessed. What’s more, the sound is gone, the voice small and sour, a shadow of her past. She vocalizes through the music with rather unpleasant tone and unclear French, rarely looking at her Coroebus. Very disappointing.

The army of supporting cast was strong, for the most part. Karen Cargill’s warm, rich low mezzo as Anna was a highlight, and she made an excellent contrast to Graham. Paul Appleby sang Hylas with a sweet tenor and honest, simple phrasing. In contrast Eric Cutler was a Iopas with a large but uneven voice and fussy phrasing (with a fussy staging from Zambello), somewhat miscast and unaware that less is sometimes more. Julie Boulianne sounded clear as Ascagne with some strange flirty direction. Stephen Gaertner stood in for Dwayne Croft as Chorèbe and showed a strong, full dark baritone. The two most prominent basses, Kwangchoul Youn (long time, no see!) as Narbal and Richard Bernstein as Panthée, were both excellent.

There’s great stuff in this production, but it requires patient waiting through considerable quantities of not so great stuff to get to all of it. Still, recommended under the general “come on, it’s Troyens” rule.

Les Troyens continues through December with an HD broadcast on January 5.

*Like the set of David McVicar’s London production, this Met one (which
came first) also features, in the Carthage set, a raked circular thing center stage
that has little buildings on it (these look more like building blocks
while McV’s were very clearly a city). Unfortunately I have no pictures
of the NYC incarnation; here is the London one:

Coincidence? Errrrr.

Photos copyright Met.

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Review

When you needa Aida

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“He’s alive!” “You’re toast.”

Nearly every year the Met schedule contains innumerable performances of Aida. This being a difficult-to-cast opera that sells without big names, the singing is often not that great (Latonia Moore’s Aida last season was an excellent exception, though I heard her only on the radio). This year the Egyptology made the HD broadcast schedule, and for two performances in the run–the broadcast and the one before it–the cast aligned into Liudmyla Monastyrska, Roberto Alagna, and Olga Borodina, what you could possibly call an all-star Aida. Unfortunately it ended up being a little too cautious to be exciting.

Verdi, Aida. Metropolitan Opera, 12/12/12. Production by Sonja Frisell, conducted by Fabio Luisi with Liudmyla Monastyrska (Aida), Roberto Alagna (Radames), Olga Borodina (Amneris), George Gagnidze (Amonasro), Stefan Kocan (Ramfis).

I went to see this last Wednesday (sorry not to write earlier… shit happens), but the HD cameras were already everywhere (they record the performance before as a backup). This was, overall, a strangely bloodless and small-scale performance, and I seriously think the singers were playing to the scale of the movie screen’s close-ups, not the big theater. From my spot in the orchestra standing room during Act 1, the acting was strangely muted and blank. OK, so this is often a park and bark opera, but lots of important and dramatic plot happens and the visuals of the production are so Cleopatra (the Liz Taylor one) that you hope for some big melodramatic acting too. Then a gentleman who was not feeling well left at the first intermission and gave me his seat in row H center, which is ridiculously close to the action, and while I could see many more details in the acting and in some ways appreciated its subtlety, I still found it underplayed. (The sound is a lot better there than in standing room, too.)

Of course another factor was Mr. Smooth, Fabio Luisi, on the podium. On the one hand, he doesn’t go for cheesy bombast and always keeps things moving swiftly. On the other an Aida that sounds more like Mozart is, outside a few of the more ethereal moments, not very exciting. This was, as always, professionally done, with Monastyrska particularly tuned in to his work. (Some of the other singers, not so much, which I will get to shortly.) The orchestra was fine, as was the chorus, but it was all a little too held back to be fully involving.

Soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska has risen to the big leagues almost overnight and it’s easy to tell why. She’s got the killer combination of tremendous volume, solid technique, and decent musicality, and made real music out of a part that is often struggled through. The voice is more notable for its volume than its beauty, but she varies the color more than many in her fach. What she lacks, so far, is a personality as big as her voice, and a sense that she is making the role her own. Still, she was rock-solid, untiring, and the favorite note of Aida-fanciers, the high C in “O patria mia,” was impeccable.

This was Roberto Alagna’s first Radamès of this run, though he has sung it at the Met before. Some lack of security was evident between him and Luisi.  I was glad that his voice was more controlled than the last time I heard him, and while the tone is duller than in years past he is still a solid singer. But Radamès is not a happy role for him, and he has to undersing and strategize to get through the evening. I am belatedly convinced that the loggionisti in Milan were correct, even if they were not very polite. He didn’t give that notorious “Celeste Aida” ending a shot, instead singing a lower variation (preceding it with some unwelcome falsetto), and he was also strangely restrained in the acting department, his usual exuberance tamed. We can be thankful for small favors–he seems to have lightened up on the bronzer since I last saw him in this, and also covered up his chest this time. (The Met should be ashamed of the audible Velcro on that armor, though. Audible Velcro is the Scourge of Opera.)

Olga Borodina got a fair amount of grief for this Amneris from other audience members, and I agree that like Alagna she is past her strongest years. The high notes are perilous and the high Bs in the Judgement Scene were cut off abruptly. But I found a great deal to enjoy in her singing; the rest of her voice has incredible depth and richness. And she was more engaged and animated than some of her colleagues. Finally, bug-eyed baritone George Gagnidze provided his usual reliable villainous snarling. The guy is not exactly a star–there’s not a lot of vocal glamor there–but damn if he doesn’t always get the job done in fine style. Supporting roles were on the underpowered side.

The production, well, on the bright side, I’m glad they’re now using way less blackface than they did on this old video of it. And Alexei Ratmansky’s dances, an addition from a season or two ago, are a good cut above average (though the execution left something to be desired). But overall the thing looks like a costume party in the Met Museum where everyone is doing the Ancient Egyptian equivalent of Civil War reenactment. It’s too familiar and clichéd to be more than mundane, and not over the top enough to be fun. Time for a new production here, I think. Should the budget not allow, I have an idea. Inclined to agree with Edward Said that this opera represents the authority of Europe’s vision of Egypt of the 1860s, I suggest finding a Verdi lookalike, putting a pith helmet on his head, give him a sheaf of manuscript paper and a shovel and set him loose on this production. For once it would kind of make sense.

Photo copyright Met (no name attached).

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Review

Met Opera shows audience some clemency

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I was late on the Met’s revival of La clemenza di Tito, but I did go on Thursday and thought I would briefly recap. As many others have already written, this is one of the best evenings at the Met so far this season, and in the Mozart department specifically worlds better than the dire Figaro (and, from what I hear, the current Don Giovanni as well). The conducting and direction are detailed, insightful, and precise, and the cast is excellent. Conductor Harry Bicket is associated with HIP performance and here gave a swift and light yet still dignified interpretation, and the orchestra sounded pretty great. (As much as I like HIP Mozart, having the superior intonation of the modern clarinet in Tito is always a blessing. But fortunately here a harpsichord replaced Figaro‘s piano in the recits.)

The cast is led by android mezzo Elina Garanca as Sesto. This was the first time I’d heard her since she’d had her baby, and her voice, always a secure and smooth instrument, seems to have become warmer and richer, a definite improvement. She is a lovely Mozart singer–while her exactitude and cool temperament can come off as overly detached and anonymous in other repertoire, here they are elegant, and she is much better-suited for seeming noble and conflicted than she is at pretending she’s a dirty and passionate gypsy. She stayed almost entirely on the tracks in the obstacle course portion of “Parto, parto,” and did something astonishing in “Deh, per questo istate solo,” Sesto’s lowest and most vulnerable point–she acted quite well! This was, along with her appropriately distant Charlotte in Wien, the most convincing performance I’ve seen from her, and vocally definitely the best.

Barbara Frittoli’s voice may not be quite refulgent–the high notes have a wobble, and the tone is not quite velvety–, but she’s a real artist and imbues this difficult music with expression and finesse. She threw herself into the production’s rather undignified conception of Vitellia with humor, and has excellent comic timing. She seems to have borrowed her fruity “Non più di fiori” chest voice from Karita Mattila, which is not good, but vocal imperfections are forgivable in crazy lady music, particularly when you sing it with this kind of conviction. Debutant Lucy Crowe (once an excellent Sophie in München) sounded gorgeous as Servilia, with a sweet and peachy tone with just a bit of an edge to it, and impeccable musicianship. She is also a fine actress. Kate Lindsey has a leaner voice than Garanca, giving her Annio some contrast, and while her singing is classy it was somewhat less glamorous than the rest of the women.

This leaves us with Tito, the only male role of importance. Russell Thomas took the second half of this run this performance only (replacing Giuseppe Filianoti). He’s got a sweet tenor voice and can more or less handle the strenuous coloratura of “Se all’impero,” but the lower notes tend to be unstable in pitch and projection. He is a decent actor, starting off with something more interesting (slightly insecure and nervous) than he ended up with at the end. While a good enough performance, he was overall not on the same level as the women and I kind of wish I had seen Filianoti.

Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s production dates from 1984, and everyone seems very enchanted by its elaborate lighting plot (sometimes unnecessarily showy–slow down those crossfades! or can the dimmers not handle it?) and clean white drapery. I wonder if all the petticoat-fanciers recognize that it is the intellectual grandparent of Stefan Herheim’s Serse. The costumes combine eighteenth-century motifs with quasi-Roman ones, and Tito’s Forum is already a cracked ruin (no less than Stanley Sadie criticized this decision upon the premiere–“in Tito’s time the Forum was still quite new”–to which I say, no shit, Sherlock, and Servilia wasn’t dressed like Donna Anna back then, either). Vitellia is a deposed noblewoman, Tito’s hereditary power is maintained solely due to strength of character–and he wonders if even that will be enough. The sense of something being extended past its logical expiration date is a commentary on the opera’s place in history, an outdated opera seria composed in 1791, an anachronistic tribute to both a musical logic and a political power that no longer promised the certainty they once did. It’s a fine production and has been revived well here, though the burning of Rome is not the best effect ever.

There’s only one more performance but I encourage you to catch it if you can, and the HD should be on PBS at some point.


Mozart, La clemenza di Tito. Metropolitan Opera, 12/6/2012. Production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle (revival), conducted by Harry Bicket with Russell Thomas (Tito), Elina Garanca (Sesto), Barbara Frittoli (Vitellia), Lucy Crowe (Servilia), Kate Lindsey (Annio), Oren Gradus (Publio).

Video: Elina Garanca sings the opening of “Parto, parto”

Photo copyright Ken Howard/Met.

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Review

O don fatale: a holiday gift guide

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Presents!

Searching for an opera-related gift for someone? Here are some ideas. The Times suggests that you get them a Ring Cycle, a Ring Cycle, or a Ring Cycle, the so I’m not going to suggest that (er, is the “super-deluxe” Solti set really worth $318? Does it sound different from the $120 version that includes all the other mature Wagner operas too–which is probably a far better gift, though it may lack libretti?*).

I don’t get any $ from you clicking on these links and I know they are US-centric, but it’s the easiest way of doing it.

Stefan Herheim’s La bohème (DVD) (not pictured above): The Norwegian doyen of phantasmagorical Regietheater has been criminally neglected on video, but luckily that has begun to change. This is a deeply sad, very beautiful look at death and memory. Highly recommended, particularly for Christmas. You can now get his Eugene Onegin as well (which I wrote about here). (Bohème, Onegin)

Opera Glasses: Those dainty little ones work if you have fancy seats and want to see your favorite singer sweat, but if you’re stuck in the Family Circle these suckers mean business and still don’t take up too much space in your bag. (B&H Photo)

L’incoronazione di Poppea (DVD): Monteverdi’s Nero gets away with murder, adultery, and more in an impassioned, lush, R-rated opera that gives Lulu a run for her money in depravity. This recent performance of David Alden’s vintage production, conducted by Harry Bicket with Sarah Connolly and Miah Persson, is probably the best video around. Hey, does anyone recognize this particular staging? (It’s in Alden’s Ballo “Eri tu.”) (Amazon)

Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker, A History of Opera (book): I am excited to see this book by two of the most important and provocative opera scholars around, which should be very interesting. I haven’t read it yet but am still recommending on general principle. (Amazon)

Tosca (DVD): Antonio Pappano’s fabulous conducting, plus the ideal cast of–bear with me–Angela Gheorghiu, Jonas Kaufmann, and Bryn Terfel make this a Tosca not to miss. I know Angela and Tosca may not seem like a natural fit, but on this video at least she’s wonderfully musical and the voice sounds terrific, and her acting also convinces. Both the men are super. Only the Regie is a little bit lacking. (Amazon)

Karen Engelmann, The Stockholm Octavo (book): This entertaining historical novel is based around the historical assassination of Gustavus III of Sweden–i.e. the events of Un ballo in maschera. Only this version involves way more fans and, fortunately, no Oscar. (Amazon)

Prima Donna, Karina Gauvin (CD): Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin is unfortunately something of a best-kept secret among Baroque fans, but her silvery tone, impeccable phrasing, and vivid expression should work for everyone. This CD is one of those historic diva tribute albums, the diva in question being Anna Maria Strada and mixes some familiar music (Alcina) with less familiar. (Amazon)

Patrick Carnegy, Wagner and the Art of the Theatre (book): This isn’t a new book, but I have to recommend it anyway because it’s absolutely terrific–overall, the single best opera book dealing with opera staging. You’ll learn a tremendous amount about stage technology, changing notions of operatic aesthetics, and landmark productions. It’s pricey but it’s a very substantial, well-illustrated volume. (Amazon)

La bohème (DVD): This is the Salzburg production with Anna Netrebko at her very best (the Act 2 consumerist frenzy is pictured at the top of this post). I enjoyed this one quite a lot, and would like to see it again with Piotr Beczala actually singing. I’m also hoping there’s a Special Feature from the crazy performance I attended. That’s what DVD extras are for.  (Amazon)

Also can someone get me a few of these and throw in a round-trip flight? Happy holidays and don’t forget to listen to some bombastic operatic Christmas music. I’ll be back from Beatrice di Tenda next week.

*Note to my mom: don’t get this for me. I have the Solti Ring already.

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Review

The Tucker Gala blasts it out

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Only excerpts allowed!

The Tucker Gala again brought a lineup of the Met’s current roster (plus some extras) to Avery Fischer Hall on Sunday in support of grants for young artists as well as in support of having a big party where everyone sings arias really loud. The choices can be unusual.

One moment I am introduced to the wonderful mezzo Jamie Barton, who I had never heard before and found stunning. Then the next moment Dmitri Hvorostovsky is singing Wagner in a sequined tuxedo, and I do not think that he should do either of these things (sing Wagner or wear a sequined tuxedo) outside a gala (or, possibly, anywhere), but it’s still somehow enjoyable. While I found this year’s group less exciting than last year’s, Bryn Terfel and his pockets full of beer bottles can’t always be in town at the right time. This year’s program had the advantage of a large number of singers who I had never heard before, and some of them were really great!

You can watch an edited version of this gala on PBS on December 13 (they might have a hard time dealing with the clap-happy audience). Here’s the rundown.

Galas are full of gimmicks and, in my opinion, best described using them. This one began with a recording of namesake Richard Tucker singing “Che gelida manina.” So for each performance I ask: if Richard Tucker’s disembodied voice is the soundtrack of the opening, what cinematic, TV, or similar habitat would the following live performances best inhabit? This may be particularly apt if you believe that Hollywood is killing opera.

Ailyn Pérez, soprano (Tucker Prize Winner)
Massenet, Cour-la-Reine Scene from Manon
Pérez has a gorgeous light lyric soprano voice that really blossoms at the top, and a winningly charismatic stage presence. Manon is a perfect role for her. In the opening, however, the coloratura tended to show off her control for the sake of showing that she had it, rather than be used for musical-expressive purposes, and the effect was somewhat artificial. Arguably, though, a “willful” approach is appropriate to the character, which is why Manon is hella annoying, and that’s not Ailyn’s fault.
Soundtrack for: Confessions of a Shopaholic 2, in which the protagonist goes to Paris
Gerald Finley, baritone
“Sibilar gli angui d’Aletto” from Rinaldo
A peculiar choice, though I guess Finley doesn’t get frequent chances to show off his coloratura skills, which are indeed outstanding. It’s a very festive and ceremonial-sounding aria (due to the trumpets), which was nice, but I wish he had made some expressive contrast in the B section? Perhaps that is too much to ask in this rather Handel-hostile atmosphere.
Soundtrack for: A montage of overly elaborate wedding preparations in a romantic comedy
Tara Erraught, mezzo
“Una voce poco fa” from Il barbiere di Siviglia
I have enjoyed a number of Erraught’s performances as a member of the Bayerische Staatsoper’s ensemble and it was a pleasure to hear her get a chance to shine here. She got off to a fluttery start but ripped through the coloratura with dexterity and her lyric mezzo really opened up towards the end. She is also very animated and entertaining for a concert performance.
Soundtrack: Baby tigers frolicking in a nature show
Erwin Schrott, bass-baritone
Boito, “Ave Signor” from Mefistofele
I swear the Schrott-ster was wearing the same long leather coat he did as the Devil in Vienna’s disastrous Faust. Unfortunately he did not bring the ukulele this time, and was wearing a shirt. He has sufficient personality and charm to compensate for a certain lack of musical and linguistic specificity, but his voice was maybe not ideally large for this selection.
Soundtrack: something out of the Scary Movie franchise
Jamie Barton, mezzo
Donizetti, “O mon Fernand” from La favorite
Barton has a giant, freely produced mezzo with lots of chest voice drama in the lower reaches, and this was really excitingly sung. She has a good sense of musical timing, varied her big tone’s color nicely, and sounds great up high too. Can she sing Eboli like, really soon?
Soundtrack: Something major happening to a minor character in a Paul Thomas Anderson movie
Giuseppe Filianoti, tenor
Verdi, “Quando le sera al placido” from Luisa Miller
Filianoti is a very expressive and idiomatic singer with a lovely plummy sound in some places but there’s a ripe and wobbly quality in much of it that says all is not, in fact, placido. It’s unfortunate, because there is so much nice stuff there too, and he is very sincere and direct. The top seems most problematic.
Soundtrack: A pastoral scene in a movie about ancient Romans.
Dmitri Hvorostovsky, baritone
Wagner, “O du, mein holder Abendstern” from Tannhäuser
Wha???? Yes, Hvorostovsky, Russian Italianate baritone par excellence, sang Wagner. It wasn’t bad, exactly, and this is a number that demands his silky legato approach, but the vowels were peculiar, and the entire effect rather disconcerting. While this is a  contemplative number, something about it here came off heavy and threatening, particularly in the huffing and puffing in the last few minutes. That evening star is coming to get you!
Soundtrack: A montage of war damage on Downton Abbey
Quinn Kelsey, baritone and Ildar Abdrazakov, bass-baritone
Verdi, “Tardo per gli anni e tremolo” from Attila
Two big low voices! Both are fine voices but I can’t say I think this duet is very interesting. Let’s talk about them later, separately.
Soundtrack: The scene from the really questionable grand opera in Phantom of the Opera, given a musical upgrade
Olga Borodina, mezzo
Saint-Saëns, “Ma coeur s’ouvre à ta voix” from Samson et Dalla
Olga Borodina still has the lushest, richest mezzo in the business, and this was absolutely fantastic. The high note at the end wasn’t a keeper, however.
Soundtrack: A sex scene in a French art film
Marcello Giordani, tenor
Leoncavallo, “Vesti la giubba” from Pagliacci
Of course. The meatball count was lower than last year, but someone had to do it, and the responsibility fell to the extremely Italian Giordani, whose hand gestures would give away his ethnicity if his voice had not already. This was on the whole stronger than his Friday night Calàf, but this voice sounds worn out, and the sobs were over the top.
Soundtrack: The Godfather, Part IV
Filianoti, Erraught, Barton, Abdrazakhov, and co.
Offenbach (NOT REALLY), Septet from Les Contes d’Hoffmann
It’s a big dramatic piece, but it’s kind of over-the-top and not by Offenbach! Arguably it sounds less ridiculous out of context than it does smushed into Hoffmann, though. But short for this purpose. Why not the infinitely better Antonia ensemble?
Soundtrack: A dramatic rescue scene in a superhero movie
Erwin Schrott
Ziegler, “Rojo Tango”
Who did Schrott sleep with to get two solo numbers? …. Oh. Right. It’s a great idea, but this would have been more fun had he been more audible and had the words not been entirely unknown to me. Also he matched Hvorostovsky in the sequined tux department.
Soundtrack: A chase sequence in a James Bond movie
Ailyn Perez and Stephen Costello, tenor
Mascagni, “Suzel, buon di” from L’amico Fritz
Costello has a reedy timbre that while pleasant enough fails to open up on the top notes like his wife Perez’s does (she, on the other hand, doesn’t sound like she has a middle voice is strong enough to sing this kind of thing full time). But for the purposes of this excerpt it was all perfectly lovely, and they probably wouldn’t have sounded lightweight in non-Tucker company–this gala, like most Tuckers, tended towards big and meaty voices.
Soundtrack: Before Noontime, which takes place in Florence. Julie Delpy doesn’t fly out until 18:00, but she’s on Ryanair and has to get to Pisa.
Ildar Abdrazakov, bass-baritone
Rossini, “La calunnia” from Il barbiere di Siviglia
Abdrazakov has an agreeably deep timbre and admirably precise and tasteful musicianship, but he failed to project in the patter sections. Nonetheless, a nice selection.
Soundtrack: The clock is running out on Top Chef!
Quinn Kelsey, baritone
Giordano, “Nemico della patria,” from Andrea Chénier
To be honest by this point in the program I was beginning to check out; it was a long succession of numbers without any break at all. Kelsey has an impressive voice, though, very big and secure.
Soundtrack: ? You say in the comments. Sorry.
Liudmyla Monastyrska, soprano
Verdi, “Vieni, t’affretta” from Macbeth
And then I woke up! Monastyrska cutely brought a crumpled piece of paper to read in the letter opening to this aria, and then launched into the singing with a giant, metallic, very Slavic soprano. While not all the coloratura was the model of exactitude, her voice is big and impressive from top to bottom and this was genuinely thrilling singing. Her upcoming Aida at the Met should be something to hear.
Soundtrack: A serial killer is sharpening his knives in a Korean horror movie
New York Chorale Society
Verdi, “Va, pensiero” from Nabucco
“So we hired this chorus, what should we have them sing?”
“Va, pensiero, what else?”
“But didn’t they sing that last year?”
“No, you just think they did, because you can’t imagine them singing anything else. According to what you wrote, they didn’t get their own number last year. Unless you just left it out.”
“OK, whatever. Shouldn’t this gala have an intermission?”
Soundtrack: A video of last year’s Tucker Gala, which apparently didn’t involve “Va, pensiero,” but might as well have
Borodina and Hvorostovsky
Rimsky-Korsakov, “Zachem ty?” from The Tsar’s Bride
This is a gorgeous, gorgeous duet and they are the perfect people to sing it, and their voices match wonderfully. They tried to make this dramatic, which would probably be more effective for me if I understood a word of the text (the gala still doesn’t provide translations), but it seemed urgent and impassioned and all that. And also the vocal equivalent of shag carpet.
Sountrack: Due to the extreme quantities of Russian-ness involved we have to stick with a national theme here. Let’s say a BBC mini-series with too many Princes whose plot may or may not owe something to 100 pages of War and Peace. 

Giordani and Finley

Bizet, The Duet (you know the one), Pearl Fishers
This was supposed to be the duet from Otello,
but it was changed. I’m not sure if this was a good thing or not, but
I’m sure that Costello or Filianoti could have pulled off this
high tenor part better than Giordani, who sounded strained. I fear
for Les Troyens.
Soundtrack: Ironically pretty music used in a gritty noir  

A moment for the conductor, Patrick Summers, and the orchestra (“Members of the Met Orchestra”)
There
were some embarrassing issues with wind solos, but no outright
catastrophes. I’m sure they didn’t rehearse this much. Tempos seemed
conventional.  
 

Like, everyone with Perez as Violetta, Costello as Alfredo, Kelsey as Gérmont, and co.
Verdi, Act II finale from Traviata
This started at Alfredo bursting in on Violetta, which is a tense place to begin but Costello and Perez made it startlingly vivid. She shows signs of being a really great Violetta, and this was her most compelling singing of the evening, with a rare level of dramatic life and connection between music and character. She might be great in the Met’s production should spring’s Violetta, Diana Damrau, be excessively postpartum, no?
Soundtrack: Too dramatic and narrative to be the background of anything. 

Encore: Brindisi from Traviata

The Tucker Gala shows no fear in embracing the predictable. I must admit I was sad that there were no surprise guests, though.

Parting Questions:

  • Were the women all asked to wear black or white gowns? Only Pérez wore a color (and Erraught a very dark muted green). Dull, particularly when some of the men were so out there, fashion-wise.
  • Who is now dying to hear Monastryska as Aida? (I AM.)
  • Did they ask a surprise guest who then didn’t show up on them?
  • Did the winds rehearse at all?
  • Is there a rule about how much of the repertoire has to be Verdi or verismo?
  • What is Tara Erraught doing in NYC? (“Visiting her auntie” would not be the most interesting answer, even if it’s true.)
  • Which parts will make the PBS broadcast? (Hopefully not Pearl Fishers.)
  • Wouldn’t it have been awesome if PBS host Audra McDonald had sung? (She did not. She and Finley could have done Doctor Atomic! That would not have been very Tucker-like, though.)
  • Why didn’t Olga Borodina sing “I Am Easily Assimilated,” as I had helpfully recommended? (Alas. The Dalila was very appreciated, however.)
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Review

Turandot and the culture industry

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It is a little-known fact that when Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer wrote in Dialektik der Aufklärung that “amusement always means putting things out of mind, forgetting suffering, even when it is on display… at its root is powerlessness,” they were thinking of Franco Zeffirelli’s Met Opera production of Turandot. Despite it being performed year in and year out, this Friday was the first time I have seen this ridiculously outsized spectacle, because I try to avoid things that I know will make me angry, afraid that I will be compelled to unleash the blogging equivalent of the Incredible Hulk. But on Friday to the Met I went, and it was just about as bad as I feared, if not worse.

Turandot’s China, as composed by Puccini, is a vast, cold machine, its people an anonymous mob and its princess ice. But who should appear but quasi-European Calàf, who manages to, like Don José, conquer the resistant feminine Other. (Think of Liù as Turandot’s Micaëla.) Zeffirelli’s vast stage machines, the sets massive and gratuitously detailed and crowded with scurrying extras, leave little space for human feeling and individuals. Perhaps Turandot’s realm is actually his ultimate achievement as a director. It fits the music in a way where his Traviata was merely ridiculous, but it exacerbates the problems of the score.

That Viennese Turandot where all the characters were insects was onto something–if you hang onto the Chinese setting, it’s hard to do so in a way that doesn’t feature a) awful cultural appropriation and b) the direct portrayal of the Chinese as soulless savages. If you don’t see what’s wrong with this I recommend you read this. And Zeffirelli’s kitsch is dire in this regard. I might add that the last scene, where Calàf comes pretty close to raping Turandot before she decides she wants it at the last second, makes me really unhappy. While I find ending the opera with Liù’s death (the point where Puccini’s score ends) overly abrupt, maybe it has more going for it than I realized when I saw that version in Munich last summer (that production that is not the last word in self-consciousness but in comparison to this one is positively enlightened).

Anyway, Zeffirelli’s theme park visuals still get applause, particularly the epic Act 2 set, but this is the sort of opera that I feel like I always need to apologize for: visuals that beat the viewer into submission, casual racism, and careless treatment of the characters and story. The Emperor and Turandot begin Act 2 so far upstage that they are rendered nearly inaudible, and it’s often hard to pick the leading characters out of the masses onstage. It has, when combined with the vivid banging of the score, an undeniable potency, but it’s not something I want anything to do with. The audience seemed to think they had gotten their money’s worth, but if you want to see something artistic I recommend redirecting yourself to Un ballo in maschera.

Musically this production was satisfactory, and in that respect I enjoyed it, though I wish the sets had not swallowed the singers’ voices as well as their presences. Conductor Dan Ettinger knows his Turandot–he conducted the Munich performance I saw last summer as well–and except for a few snafus with the chorus (and an unfortunate trumpet crack right before “Straniero, ascolta,”) the orchestra was strong. The vocal highlight was debuting soprano Janai Brugger as Liù. Granted, it’s easy for Liù to steal Turandot, but Brugger’s crystalline yet full lyric soprano was beautifully controlled and expressive, portraying a rare moment of vulnerability in this tank of a performance. Less happy was Marcello Giordani as Calàf. This incredibly uneven singer had a night that was more bad than good. While some high notes still can ring out with power and squillo, all but the top few notes are sour and hollow, and even a few notes sounded like yelps. As Turandot, Iréne Theorin had sufficient power (though the set wasn’t helping her), but I found this less impressive than her Brünnhilde last summer. Her vibrato seemed unwieldy and her tone often turned shrill. But she is a lovely actress in a role that is usually just stood through. James Morris was a horribly wobbly Timur, Dwayne Croft was a fine Ping but Tony Stevenson and Eduardo Valdes were unfortunately less than audible as Pang and Pong, as was Bernard Fitch as the Emperor. Ryan Speedo Green made an impressive Met debut in the small role of the Mandarin, a bass-baritone ringing out through the crowds.

But you’d have to pay me to go see this again.

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Review

David Alden hosts a Ballo in maschera at the Met

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The Met’s taut, spooky new Ballo in maschera is the best new production this house has seen in some time. David Alden has finally brought his trademark surreal, minimalist film noir aesthetic to New York. Welcome to the early 1990’s, Met– the age when we all were scandalized by David Alden and thought he was crazy (not including me, because I was in elementary school and not going to the opera yet,* but you get the idea). But a production like this is always welcome, however belated, and compared to most of what we see at the Met it seems very fresh and modern. There’s nothing particularly shocking or radical about it; it’s certainly watered down from his European work, but it’s good drama and it would be a shame if the plentiful time-delay boos present at the premiere (I suspect due to the production’s deficit of horses and bayonets) detracted from its very real merits. The singing isn’t uniformly fabulous but it’s probably one of the better casts that can be assembled for this opera, and they are trying very hard.

Verdi, Un ballo in maschera. Metropolitan Opera, 11/8/2012. New production premiere directed by David Alden, sets by Paul Steinberg, costumes by Brigitte Reiffenstuehl, lights by Adam Silverman, choreography by Maxine Braham. Conducted by Fabio Luisi with Marcelo Àlvarez (Gustavo), Dmitri Hvorostovsky (Count Ankarströrm/Renato), Sondra Radvanovsky (Amelia), Kathleen Kim (Oscar), Dolora Zajick (Ulrica). 

I can’t describe this opera better than Alden did himself in a recent interview: “the bizarre combination of serious political material, high Italian melodrama based around the hackneyed stuff of marital infidelity, and an almost operetta-like lightness of being, is experimental and dislocated and sets this apart from his [Verdi’s] other masterpieces.” Ballo is an opera much beloved by the scholarly set (and also Luigi Dallapiccola), who celebrate its radical mix of styles and apparently impressive motivic integration. I’ve always had an “mmmkay” reaction to this because Ballo has never convinced me onstage–the mixture of comic and melodramatic styles seems like a bad idea and it’s never had any emotional resonance, possibly because its characters don’t get much exposition. The music is frequently brilliant, but Amelia is a hysteric, King Gustavo a well-meaning doofus, Renato a bore, and smug coloratura soprano page Oscar one of the most annoying characters in all of opera. It has not been an opera to attract many Regie types, either, with Calixto Bieito’s notorious toilet production (which I haven’t seen) being a notable exception. At the Met, Alden’s replaces a traditional, heavy production by Piero Faggioni whose most memorable moment was, when I last saw it, Dmitri Hvorostovsky getting tangled up in his own cape.

Alden’s production does an impressive job with the first issue, coherence, but I’m afraid still nothing on the emotional front. Maybe it’s just that sort of opera. The “it’s all a dream!” trope might be, er, tired but for an opera this jumbled it’s a smart move and Alden deals with the changing tone with aplomb. We open with King Gustavo, dressed in a vaguely 1930’s/40’s suit, dozes off in a chair. An enormous Baroque painting of Icarus falling from the sky hovers over the stage, and Oscar enters flapping a pair of white feathered wings. This is kind of ingenious, because he evokes so many things–the painting above, Cupid (remember that Alden has directed a metric ton of Baroque opera in Europe), and the death figures who will finally appear in the finale. The walls are covered in hypnotic wallpaper (Alden and set director Paul Steinberg are wallpaper connoisseurs second only to Richard Jones), the stage steeply raked. The time and place are ambiguous, and never become any clearer. (This seemed to bother lots of people but I’m OK with it?) Gustavo and some other characters will hang out in this chair periodically–also genius because Alden has given any tenor his dream: a chance to sit down, take a break, and have a drink of water while onstage.

The dreary setting constantly threatens to break, with the music, into exuberant comedy. Office drones sit at stainless steel desks but Oscar incites them to dance; a worried group of citizens visits crazy old lady Ulrica only to have some fun-loving sailors bring the thing to life. (Ulrica later pulls a memento mori skull from her purse to show Amelia.) Sometimes it doesn’t really make sense, but Alden can also keep the action straightforward and tight when need be. Renato and Gustavo’s relationship is clearly drawn early on–Renato is worried that his friend might be a little dim– and Renato’s dismissal of Ulrica’s prophecy has a clear undercurrent of denial. Purists will probably be offended at the lack of any gallows in Act 2, but the Personenregie is engrossing and the entrance of the conspirators from various trapdoors and upstage genuinely creepy. Act 3 begins in a claustrophobically tiny white room, featuring a physically intense confrontation between Renato and Amelia–the photo of Gustavo on the wall might seem kind of cheesy, but it makes the thing work. The ball features, on Met standards, remarkably OK dancing, and the ending suggests that everyone is still trapped.

While it still didn’t quite convince me that Ballo is a masterwork (I know, I know, but I don’t feel it), it’s a compelling ride with the appeal of one of those crazy old B-grade noirs where all sorts of random stuff happens and none of the characters are terribly complex but it still keeps us involved. (Have you ever seen Detour? It’s bananas. Something like that.) I’m not sure if the Icarus stuff really adds the symbolic heft that is intended–OK, so Gustavo is a king who is taking increasingly treacherous risks, but so what?–but it doesn’t hurt and adds a note of fantasy to the  disjointed nature of the setting. Alden gets impressive performances from his cast, most of whom are not quite known for their nuanced and natural acting abilities but convincingly make a real show here.

Marcelo Alvarez worked hard all evening in the long and difficult role of Gustavo, concentration written on his face. He managed to act (and dance!) pretty well, only occasionally slipping into the cliched gestures that usually constitute his entire performance, but the effort expended was a little too obvious. Similarly, his lyric tenor was pushed to its limits, producing an often-pleasant bright sound at the top but unstable and unsure of pitch in the lower reaches. He has a short musical attention span, tending to sing in words and phrases rather than paragraphs and lacking a long legato line. This was not a problem of Dmitri Hvorostovsky, but he was also pushing his voice and frequently sounded blustery. His voice has an absolutely glorious, velvety sweet spot around middle C, but the rest of the range sounds strained. The final section of “Eri tu” was his strongest singing of the evening–one suspected he had been saving his voice–and showcased his excellent phrasing. Acting-wise he was suitably intimidating and more nuanced than his usual cape-twirling, and also managed to completely outclass his tenorial colleague in looking good wearing a fedora.

On the ladies’ side, Sondra Radvanovsky sang a knockout “Morrò, ma prima in grazia,” which sits in her English horn-like lower range and built beautifully over the course of the aria. I wish the rest of her singing had been as musical, but like Alvarez she often sounded somewhat raw and blunt. Her distinctive vibrato makes her tone instantly recognizable, and her intonation only occasionally sagged flat. Amelia is a hard character because we never know who she is, and Radvanovsky didn’t really solve this problem, but she did seem earnest. Kathleen Kim sounded sweet and bright as Oscar and darted around as demanded. I find this character insufferable but she almost made Oscar bearable, not leaning excessively into the tra la las. Dolora Zajick ,Queen of Chest Voice, made a mighty noise as Ulrica and didn’t really act too much. I do want to carry around a skull in my purse too, though.

Fabio Luisi conducted like someone who doesn’t mind being left to the end of the review. I am always wishing for Pappano in this repertory but Luisi was perfectly able, keeping things efficiently moving if not always nail-biting. I wished for juicier melodrama and more contrast but it was clean and competent and the orchestra sounded really excellent.

It might not be a reinvention, and if you’ve seen any of Alden’s work before you basically know what to expect from this one, but it’s a solid production that makes sense of the piece, and I hope the Met audiences give it a fair chance.

Ballo continues through December.

*I made my first acquaintance with David Alden when visiting Munich at the tail end of the Peter Jonas era at the Bay Staats. Baroque mayhem!

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Review

Crudel! Perché finora farmi languir così?

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Last night’s Figaro at the Met was a really distressing experience, perhaps in part because it has some undeniable assets but they’re overwhelmed by ham-handed acting and lamentable singing. Let’s start with the good: Gerald Finley is an excellent Count, precisely and attractively sung and acted with three dimensions, hardly a power-hungry caricature. In the very difficult aria he balanced rage and frustration and still sounded musical. And David Robertson’s conducting is classy–moderately paced but never slack, with some cool details in the orchestra (though as a fan of historically informed performance I sometimes longed for crisper attack). Coordination, though, was not so great, as you will see.

Jonathan Miller’s production combines a set suggesting the Almavivas aspire to a shabby chic look (with beautiful lighting design) but adds garish, constantly changing costumes (Susanna at one point wears a dress with a green petticoat and pink underskirt reminiscent of a watermelon), to no terribly clear effect. Those costumes blur the social distinctions that are so key to this opera, a problem made far, far worse by the Personenregie of this particular revival. In Figaro, making out with someone is a political act, and as we see at every turn of the plot, not everyone’s desires receive equal opportunity. So having everyone indiscriminately roll around with everyone, as this revival does, totally screws stuff up. Susanna with Cherubino, the Countess with the Count, Susanna and the Countess, almost. Someone seems to have mistaken lying on top of someone for sexiness. Unfortunately in this case the two are mutually exclusive, and no one seems to enjoy much of a connection with anyone else. The effect of the real comic high points is diluted by all this dumb interpolated slapstick.

The evening’s biggest disappointment was Maija Kovalevska’s Countess. I understand the impulse to make the Contessa a Rosina rather than letting her sink into dowdiness, but Kovalevska’s eyelash-batting, simpering, hip-swaying portrayal was a Countess who was always looking on the bright, Carmen-ish side of life, and her perky “Dove sono” failed to have any emotional effect whatsoever. Her steely voice has a kind of unique grainy texture but the basic sound remains kind of ugly, as I’ve thought before. But while her Tatiana basically convinced, she lacks the breath or purity of line to sing Mozart, and even at quick tempos she wasn’t making it through the ends of the phrases in the arias. She lost the orchestra at (many) times, and seemed to be straining for the high notes, which I hadn’t heard from her before. Similarly, Mojca Erdmann’s Susanna always seemed more concerned about the audience looking at her than engaging with the other characters, and her tremulous, shrill voice was harsh on the ears and pitch seemed uncentered. The dramatic weight of a Figaro cast can land on either of these characters, but here neither showed any sincerity.

Cherubino is an odd role choice for Christine Schäfer, a former high coloratura, but I found her oddly convincing. Vocally I miss the depth of a mezzo sound, and Schäfer sounds thin and light. But she gave us an interestingly anxious and awkward Cherubino instead of the impetuous norm, and I wish she had fit this more fully into the production. Ildar Abdrazakov’s burly, not terribly flexible voice also sounded vocally miscast as Figaro, but he did the best he could with surprisingly credible results, and made a likable character with more restraint than most of his colleagues. Supporting roles were OK if not particularly notable with Margaret Lattimore’s Marcellina as the only standout.

In my opinion this is one of the richest of all operas, and it’s sad to see it reduced to such a mundane farce. I’m a Figaro fanatic so I couldn’t stay away but I advise you to think twice about this one.


Mozart, Le Nozze di Figaro. Metropolitan Opera, 10/26/12.

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